An Irish Heart

by C M Blackwood

  She touched my face again, cool palm lingering upon my forehead. Then she pulled my blanket-cloak aside, and lifted up the dress I still wore. I had never changed into my nightgown, I now realised. I thought of how wrinkled my dress would be in the morning. The thought made me cry harder, but I lay still.

  I felt cool fingers on my stomach. I remembered the bandages that were fastened there; fastened the night I met my first wolf. I stared up at the ceiling, but it swirled in and out of focus.

  “What are you doing here?” I mumbled.

  “I came to check on you,” she said. “I knocked on the front door, but you didn’t answer. I saw the light in your room.” She was quiet for a moment, but then she said, “It’s a good thing I came, too, because this wound here on your stomach” – I felt her tracing it gently – “is infected.”

  “Infected!” I cried, not really understanding, in my state, the significance of the word.

  She felt my face once more. “Jesus,” she whispered. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Have a muffin?” I suggested. “I don’t exactly have any, but they always make me feel better.”

  “Do you know of a doctor who lives nearby?”

  “Doctor!” I exclaimed. “Oh, aye, aye – doctor!”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Where does the doctor live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where does he live?”

  She frowned. “I’m asking you.”

  “Don’t ask me!” I cried, covering my face with my hands. “Doctor, doctor!”

  I heard her footsteps as she left the room. I felt my panic return, and I heard the wolf snarling outside my window. I heard the murderer laughing as he held his knife poised above my throat . . .

  My screaming brought Theodora Alaster running. She had a bowl in her hands, which she set down on the floor.

  “Well, I suppose this means that your father isn’t home,” she said. “I expect that you would have had him rushing in, as well.”

  When she sat down beside me, I quit the muttering that had started up after my screaming. My face was dry; my tears had dissipated. I no longer knew what I had been crying about.

  Theodora Alaster took a cloth up in her hand, and dipped in into the bowl of what seemed to be cold water. She wrung it out, patted my face with it, and then dropped it back into the bowl.

  For the first time, I noticed a glittering gold cross on a fine chain round her neck. “How shiny of you,” I said, holding out a finger to touch it.

  “Come now,” she said. “We have to get this dress off of you.”

  “Oh, the wrinkles,” I moaned, raising my fingers to my eyes; and then peeking through them. “How will I get them out? The iron’s too hot, I don’t want to touch it. It’s too hot in here, why am I so hot . . . ?”

  “It’s all right,” she said. She helped me off with my dress. “You’ll feel better soon.”

  I was having trouble hearing her. Her words sounded fuzzy, as though she were far away, in another place entirely. She was calling to me from outside the window.

  I tried to raise my head, to see what she was doing. I saw her take a small bag out of her pocket, then untie it to remove a tiny glass bottle. She uncorked it, and emptied a bit of its contents into her palm. It appeared to be some kind of powder, which she mixed with the water to make a paste. I watched as she began to smear it over the wound on my stomach, which I now saw was terribly inflamed, tinting the surrounding skin rather an ugly combination of colours: white, yellow, purple and green, all swirling together under the thick paste to make me dizzy. Had it looked like that before? Surely I couldn’t remember.

  My head fell back against the pillows. I closed my eyes, as she continued to rub the sticky goo all over.

  After she had finished, she covered the wound with a clean bandage. “You need to sleep now,” she said.

  “I can’t sleep,” I said, my voice ringing strange in my ears. “I don’t feel well.”

  “I know,” she said. “But you have to rest. You’ll see a doctor tomorrow, and he’ll help you better than I can.” She smoothed the hair back from my forehead. “But sleep now.”

  “I can’t.”

  She shrugged off her cloak, and then settled into the rocker, where she sat watching me as the candles burned down. I tried to look at her face; but saw only her fair hair in the dim candlelight.

  “Sleep, Kate.”

  I closed my eyes for a few seconds. Then I opened them, staring at the yellow-haired girl in my rocker.

  The girl leant forward, and squinted through the shadowed space betwixt us. “What happened to your cheek?” she asked.

  “My cheek?”

  She pointed. “That bruise wasn’t there before.”

  “Oh, that.” I looked about, swaying my head this way and that, and caught sight finally of the shadow of the book-pile beneath my bed. “See those?” I asked the yellow-haired girl.

  She nodded.

  “Fell down, I did, when the bed cracked up. Bopped my head, you see.” I recalled my father’s fist, coming down hard against my face. I laughed; and repeated the word “bop.”

  “Did you?” asked the yellow-haired girl.

  I nodded for a moment, but eventually began to forget why I was nodding.

  I looked at the yellow-haired girl. “Who are you?” I asked politely.

  “What?”

  “My name’s Kate.”

  I shivered, then. The blanket seemed entirely insufficient for the arctic breezes that were blowing through the room.

  “Close the window, would you?”

  “It’s closed, Kate.”

  “Close it anyway.”

  I tried to make out the shape of the window in the half-darkness, eager to prove that she was lying. It was open – I just knew it.

  As I stared across the room, allowing the wall to slide back and forth before my eyes, I began to grow drowsy. I fell asleep to flickering candlelight, an animated wall and a strange woman with golden hair.

  The cross round her neck shone like yellow diamonds. “How shiny of you,” I repeated – immediately afterwards falling into a state that was more of a stupor than sleep.

  Chapter 4

  “No . . .”

  I raised my hands in an attempt to guard myself, but they were pushed away with seemingly little effort by my oppressor. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to see what stood above me. I lay flat on my back, on a warm, soft surface. It wasn’t a bed of thorns – but I surmised that the worst was yet to come. I imagined English officers, or occult beings; whichever was the case, in my case, I knew that my chances of survival were slim.

  “Now, now, Miss O’Brien, do try to calm down,” I heard a voice say. “It’s going to be quite all right.”

  I narrowly opened one eye; and found myself looking up into the kind face of Dr Ernest Burrows.

  “Well, hello there!” he exclaimed. “I was beginning to fear that you’d never wake. If you’re wondering, you’re doing quite well; you’re very lucky that your friend brought you to me when she did. Another day or two with that infection – well, I’m afraid that it wouldn’t have been a pretty picture, dear.”

  I tried to sit up, but the pain in my stomach held me back. “What? How long have I been here?”

  “Since the day before last. You came in at first light two mornings ago. I treated your wound (best you were asleep for that, anyway), and forced a bit of syrup down your throat – and I’m pleased to say, that you’re looking much better.” He frowned, and lifted the sheet that covered me. “Well, not quite as good as new, but you’re well on your way. You’ve been rather groggy, dear; I expect that you don’t remember much of your stay.”

  I only shook my head.

  “Well, that’s only to be expected, dear.” He stood up. “I’ll return in a moment; I’m just going to fetch your friend.”

  “My friend?”

  “I suppose you’ve forgotten, then. Have you no recollection of Miss Alaster�
�s visit?”

  I remembered Theodora Alaster, standing over the stove; and then coming to the table to share a breakfast with me. But what did that have to do with anything?

  “She went to pay you a visit, and found you in quite a state. She cared for you till morning, and then brought you into town. You’re lucky she came to call on you. She must be a very good friend.”

  “We only just met.”

  He seemed not to hear that.

  “She was rather fretful, when I told her that I wasn’t altogether certain about the effects of the fever. She’s been waiting in my parlour all day. No doubt she’ll want to see you. Do you mind, dear?”

  I shook my head, and he disappeared out the door.

  I lay back against the pillows, a hand to the gnawing pain in my stomach. I winced, and pulled back the sheet to inspect.

  It seemed as though most of the skin there was discoloured. I saw the wound, zigzagging its way from my waist to my chest, bright red and angry-looking. I touched a finger to it, and found it hot. But it seemed that most of the purulence had drained away.

  I was still staring at it when the door creaked open. I replaced the sheet quickly, and glanced up to see Theodora Alaster, looking rather smaller than I remembered her; though perhaps that was only to do with the distance that separated us.

  “You’re feeling better?” she asked, inching her way into the room.

  “Yes, thank you. But I hear that you fairly saved my life! I should thank you for that, as well.”

  She smiled. “What else would you have had me do?”

  As I watched her face, I began to remember her presence there with me, in the night. I remembered her pressing a cool cloth to my head; I remembered her sitting in the rocker beside my bed, a strange light at her throat.

  “Would I sound ungrateful,” I began, “if I were to ask you why you came to call that night?”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  I waited for her to go on.

  “Just a friendly visit, you know – to see how you were faring.”

  I remembered her little bag, filled with powder-paste.

  “Did you think I would be ill?”

  She frowned. “What? No.” She scratched her neck uncomfortably. “Preparedness, you know – just a part of my nature.”

  “And don’t think I’m not glad of that.”

  “Oh, I don’t.”

  A look passed between us, then. It held for a time I could not judge, until Dr Burrows returned. When he entered the room, it was like snapping from a trance. Our eyes disconnected, and we both looked at the doctor.

  “May I ask the verdict, Doctor? Am I to return home?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said he. “You seem quite all right to me, Miss O’Brien.”

  Something occurred to me, then – and I became all of a sudden rather stiff.

  Theodora Alaster noticed. “What’s the matter?” she asked me.

  “I was just thinking – well, does my father know where I am?”

  “I went to him the day I brought you here,” she said. “He didn’t seem very perturbed.” She pursed her lips, and added, “Though he did ask if you’d finished cleaning the toilet.”

  “I’ll take you home when you’re feeling up to the ride,” said Dr Burrows. “I don’t suppose that Miss Alaster’s horse would prove very comfortable for you, now that you’re conscious.”

  His eyes twinkled in that lovely little way they had, and made me smile.

  But with another twinkling, he turned on his heel and left the room. I remained propped up against my numerous pillows. Theodora Alaster stood by the door, toying with her hands in a most anxious way.

  “Do you want to sit?” I asked.

  She smiled, but this time it was strained – something else lay behind her expression, in her eyes. She seemed distracted.

  “No, that’s all right,” she said finally. “I think I’ll be going. I’m rather tired.”

  “Oh, of course,” I said. “I feel terrible about this, though. I feel like I owe you something.”

  This time her smile was true. “You don’t owe me a thing. But I do like to think, that all this has at least rendered a friendship between us.”

  “Most certainly.”

  Her face brightened, then, and I felt the dark cloud that had seemed to hang over her, begin to move away. Her eyes were clearer, her voice more sincere.

  “Well,” I said, “I do hope to see you soon.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it,” she said.

  She made me a little wave, and left the room. I sat for a few minutes, staring out the window. I could see the road from my bed; and I could see Theodora Alaster, climbing up onto her big white horse.

  Then she was gone.

  There was a pain in my stomach, and a pressing sensation in my chest that seemed somehow familiar – as though I had felt it recently, even though I could not remember having done so.

  ***

  “Thank you, Dr Burrows,” I said, stepping down from the buggy with his arm to assist me.

  “Think nothing of it, dear,” he said. “I’m only glad to see you feeling so much better! There’s even a bit of colour in your cheeks, from the sunshine.”

  I looked towards my house. It stood, same as always, looking both dishevelled and depressed, with a roof which sloped slightly to the right.

  “Would you like me to come with you, and have a word with your father?”

  “No, Dr Burrows,” I said. “But I thank you very much for the ride.”

  “You’re quite welcome, my dear.” He heaved his short, stocky frame back into the front of the buggy, and took hold of the reins. He clicked to the horses, two pretty brown mares; and was off. I waved once more, then crossed the lawn, and pushed open the front door.

  The kitchen was bright with morning light. I stood for a few moments, looking round at the surprising lack of mess; but when my stomach began to clench in pain, I took a seat.

  I had been hardly a moment when my father came in.

  He looked at me in a strange manner. He stared for a moment before asking, “All right, then?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “How did you get home?”

  “Dr Burrows drove me.”

  “I would have come to fetch you.”

  I was silent for a little; but then I asked, “Did you take care of Ellie?”

  “I’d forgotten till yesterday,” he said. “I gave the chickens a little extra feed. Ellie’s out in the field now.”

  “Thank you,” I repeated.

  He nodded. His dark eyes were shadowed, tired-looking. I noticed the wrinkles round his mouth and eyes. There was much less hair at the top of his head than there had used to be, and what was left was changed to grey. I seldom ever took the time to look at him anymore; and just then I noticed how very old he looked.

  “You should have told me what happened to you,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, don’t apologise, now,” he said, looking away in something resembling discomfort. “You’ll be all right, I expect?”

  “Dr Burrows says so.”

  He nodded. “I suppose you’ll need to rest now. Go to bed; I’ll bring Ellie in at dusk.”

  “Thank you,” I said, yet again.

  “Just go to bed,” he snapped, turning away to fiddle with something on the counter.

  So I left him.

  Once in my bedroom, door shut tightly, I did not know what to do with myself. Probably on account of the fact I had been sleeping for two days, I was not the least bit tired.

  I coughed. The air was stuffy, and a little dusty from the days of stagnation. I went and pulled the curtains away from the window, then opened it to let in the fresh air. I sat down at the edge of the bed, and looked out into the rolling grass, so much like a sea of waving strands of green.

  I imagined it really was the sea. I turned the green to blue, and pictured the foamy caps of white at the tops of the rolling waves.
All I had ever seen of the ocean, you understand, was in pictures; and I often imagined that it lay in places where it really did not, just so I could feel as though I had been subject to its great beauty. For example – and this was the place I envisioned it most often, for the space was so large that it did not seem quite so fanciful as it might have in others – I pictured it rushing beside me and breaking upon the shore, in those wide fields to the right of Schullery Road.

  I let out a deep breath, and turned away from my make-believe ocean. Then I moved to my chest of drawers. In the same drawer that housed my mother’s dress and picture, I reached under the newspapers to find a small journal, a pen and a bottle of ink. I had touched none of it in years; and had only just remembered where it was hid, while I lay staring at the ceiling at Dr Burrows’s, having nothing much else at all to think about.

  I opened the small book, fashioned of black leather, and bound with thick string. On the first few pages were words written in a child’s hand; my hand, many years ago. The book was mostly blank pages.

  I went back to my bed, propped the small book open on my lap, and set up my pen.

  October 19, 1914

  Such a week it has been – filled with new acquaintances, wolves and sickness! I discovered this book; and another book of a deal more significance, the small contents of which lies hid for now. But I will retrieve that discovery very often from its place, I should say; for the sight of that dear lost woman brightens my heart, and lightens the weight of my spirit. I should think, from my feelings alone, that I had rescued a slow-beating heart from a dusty skeleton upon that shelf; and I will hold it often in my hands now, to rub the faded old image back to life.

  At any rate, there is not much to tell about wolves. Once you have seen one, you might say that you know them all. But after the wolf came the acquaintance; whom I daresay would take me so very long to describe justly, that I had better not even venture to try. She’s the kind who would make a worthy friend, she is – though I certainly have no reason to expect, that she will ever be my own friend in particular.

  ***

  The following week passed by with little to no event worth recording in my newfound journal. I held it every day, hefting its slight weight in my hands, longing to write but having nothing to say. I had read and reread the four short passages from my childhood (apparently I had never been much of a writer). They were pages of innocence and naiveté, gullibility and simple childishness – but still insightful in their own way. They spoke of the mundaneness of life in the hills, the interaction of a young girl with her neighbours, the want for a mother – and the want for a different father. They talked of the animals I played with in the woods: little rabbits, raccoons and squirrels, all fed with small bits of bread I kept hidden in my room.